‘It’s my tech, Max. I’ve told you. I get to choose. We’re going to do this my way.’

He rolled his eyes at whatever the response was to that.

‘You trust them? Really? Well, go work for them, then. I won’t stop you. It’s my … tech …’

His eyelids drooped.

‘My … tech … remember …’

He slumped, his breathing evening out, muttering a few last unintelligible words.

Thea and Ethan looked at each other.

‘Fuck,’ Ethan whispered, rubbing one hand over the bristle of his hair.

‘Yeah.’

She tiptoed a little closer to the bed. The man was sleeping again now, or at least seemed to be. She wasn’t going to test that out by going any nearer, especially after what he had done at the monastery. Asleep, however, he looked weak, his breath whistling slightly.

‘This has to be him, doesn’t it? From the monastery. He said he didn’t know where he was. That’s because he’s been moved.’ She turned to Ethan.

‘Or he never knows where he is because he’s crazy …’

‘What about what he said? The tech? My tech, he said. He has to be Moses! Maybe … I don’t know … that Max person he was talking to did something to him … I mean, why hide him unless he’s important? Unless he’s Moses?’

Around his left eye socket, Thea could see the words “form”, “size”, “weight” and “colour” each in its own little grid. There wasn’t anything written around his right eye, but, as Thea looked, she noticed a circular patch of scarred skin, red and raw, with a deep dent in the middle. It was the size of the disc on her own temple.

‘Look.’ She pointed to it.

Ethan’s hand instinctively went to his own disc.

‘I didn’t tell you this before,’ she said, keeping her voice steady. ‘But back at the Centre yesterday I visited Rosie and I saw Richard.’ Ethan looked blank. ‘From our sleep therapy group, remember? Sleep paralysis guy? He was taken into another room and he was … well, he was screaming and fighting – and the others were trying to control him but it was like, he was seeing something else, something I couldn’t … see.’

Ethan paled, then he set his jaw and marched out of the room.

With a quick glance at the peaceful Moses, Thea followed. She found him in the kitchen opening drawers with aggression, rifling through the things inside.

‘I am done with that shit on my head. I don’t care about the sleep.’ He pulled one drawer out and emptied it on the worktop, forks and teaspoons rattling, skimming his hands through them until he found what he was looking for.

A sharp knife.

He raced upstairs to the little bedroom on the second floor.

‘Wait!’ Thea ran after him.